Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story (9 page)

“Curtis,” I asked, “why do you listen to that stuff? It sounds absolutely ridiculous.”

“I like it,” he said. He might have tried to explain a little about the music, but at the time I wasn't quite ready to hear him. However, he played that record so often during his two weeks at home that I found myself going around humming the melody. About that time I realized that I had actually begun to enjoy classical music!

Classical music wasn't totally foreign to me. I had taken clarinet lessons since the seventh grade because that's what my brother played. And after all, that meant my mother had to rent only one instrument in the beginning, and I could use Curtis's old music. Later I went on to cornet until, in ninth grade, I switched to the baritone.

Curtis helped me to enjoy Schubert, and then I bought a record as a gift for my mother. Truthfully, I bought it for myself. The record contained the many overtures from Rossini's operas, including the most well-known
The William Tell Overture
.

My next step was listening to the German and the Italian arias. I read books about operas and understood the stories. By then I was saying, “This is great music.” I no longer pushed myself to learn about classical music because I wanted to be on
College Bowl
. I had gotten hooked.

By the time I got to college I could listen to just about any piece of music—from classical to pop—and I'd know who wrote it. I have a good ear for recognizing styles in music, and I cultivated that.

During college, every evening I used to listen to a program called
The Top One Hundred
. It played only classical music. I listened every night, and it wasn't long before I knew the top one hundred cold. Then I decided to branch out from just classical music, so I made it a point to listen and learn from a wider range of music.

I did everything I knew to get ready to try out for the
College Bowl
. Unfortunately, I never did get to appear on the program.

CHAPTER 8

College Choices

I
stared at the ten-dollar bill on the table before me, knowing I had to make a choice. And since I had only one chance, I wanted to make sure I made the right one.

For days I'd considered the matter from every possible angle. I'd prayed for God to help me. But it still seemed to come down to making one single decision.

An ironic situation faced me in the fall of 1968, for most of the top colleges in the country had contacted me with offers and enducements. However, each college required a ten-dollar non-returnable entrance fee sent with the application. I had exactly ten dollars, so I could apply only to one.

Looking back I realize that I could have borrowed the money to make several applications. Or, it's possible that if I'd talked to representatives from the schools they might have waived the fee. But my mother had pushed the concept of self-reliance for so long I didn't want to start out owing a school just to get accepted.

At that time the University of Michigan—a spectacular school and always in the top ten academically and in sports events
—actively recruited Black students. And the University of Michigan waived the fees for in-state students who couldn't afford to pay. However, I wanted to attend college farther away.

I looked hard at my future, knowing that I could get into any of the top schools but not knowing what to do. Graduating third in my class, I had excellent SAT scores, and most of the top colleges were scrambling to enroll Blacks. After college, with a major in premed and a minor in psychology, I'd be ready for medical school, and at last on the real road toward becoming a doctor.

For a long time it bothered me that I had graduated third in my senior high school class. It's probably a character flaw, but I can't help myself. It wasn't that I had to be first in everything, but I
should
have been number one. If I hadn't gotten so sidetracked by the need for peer approval, I would have been at the head of my class. In thinking toward college, I determined that would never happen again. From now on, I'd be the best student I was capable of being.

Several weeks flew by as I struggled over which college to send my application to, and by late spring I had narrowed the choice between Harvard and Yale. Either would have been great, which made the decision difficult. Strangely enough, my final decision hinged on a television program. As I watched
College Bowl
one Sunday night, the Yale students wiped the Harvard students off the face of the map with a fantastic score of something like 510 to 35. That game helped me to make my decision—I wanted to go to Yale.

In less than a month I not only had my acceptance at Yale to enter in the fall of 1969, but they offered me a 90 percent academic scholarship.

I suppose I should have been elated by the news. I was happy, but not surprised. Actually I took it calmly, and perhaps even a bit arrogantly, reminding myself that I had already accomplished just about everything I'd set out to do—a high scholastic record, top SAT scores, every kind of high school recognition possible, along with my long list of achievements with the ROTC program.

Campus accommodations befitted students of my stature. The student housing was luxurious, the rooms more like suites. The suites included a living room, fireplace, and built-in bookcases. Bedrooms branched off from the main room. Two to four students shared each suite. I had a room to myself.

I strode onto the campus, looked up at the tall, gothic-style buildings, and approved of the ivy-covered walls. I figured I'd take the place by storm. And why not? I was incredibly bright.

After less than a week on campus I discovered I wasn't that bright. All the students were bright; many of them extremely gifted and perceptive. Yale was a great leveler for me, because I now studied, worked, and lived with dozens of high-achieving students, and I didn't stand out among them.

One day I was sitting at the dining room table with several class members who were talking about their SAT scores. One of them said, “I blew the SAT test with a total of just a little over fifteen hundred in both parts.”

“That's not too bad,” another one sympathized. “Not great, but not bad.”

“What did you get?” the first student asked him.

“Oh, 1540 or 1550, total. I can't remember my exact math score.”

It seemed perfectly natural to all of them to have scores in the high ninety percentile. I kept silent, realizing that I ranked lower than every student sitting around me. It was my first awareness of not being quite as bright as I thought, and the experience washed away a little of my cockiness. At the same time, the incident only slightly deterred me. It would be simple enough to show them. I'd do what I did at Southwestern and throw myself completely into my studies, learning as much as possible. Then my grades would put me right up in the top echelon.

But I quickly learned that the classwork at Yale was difficult, unlike anything I'd ever encountered at Southwestern High School. The professors expected us to have done our homework before we came to class, then used that information as the basis for the day's lectures. This was a foreign concept to me. I'd slid through semester after semester in high school, studying only what I wanted, and then, being a good crammer, spent the last few days before exams memorizing like mad. It had worked at Southwestern. It was a shock to realize it wouldn't work at Yale.

Each day I slipped farther and farther behind in my classwork, especially in chemistry. Why I didn't work to keep up, I'm not sure. I could give myself a dozen excuses, but they didn't matter. What mattered was that I didn't know what was going on in chemistry class.

It all came to a head at the end of the first semester when I faced final examinations. The day before the exam I wandered around the campus, sick with dread. I couldn't deny it any longer. I was failing freshman chemistry; and failing it badly. My feet scuffed through the golden leaves carpeting the wide sidewalks. Sunlight and shadow danced on ivy-covered walls. But the beauty of that autumn day mocked me. I'd blown it. I didn't have the slightest hope of passing chemistry, because I hadn't kept up with the material. As the realization sunk in of my impending failure, this bright boy from Detroit also stared squarely into another horrible truth—if I failed chemistry I couldn't stay in the premed program.

Despair washed over me as memories of fifth grade flashed through my mind. “What score did you get, Carson?” “Hey, dummy, did you get any right today?” Years had passed, but I could still hear the taunting voices in my head.

What am I doing at Yale anyway?
It was a legitimate question, and I couldn't push the thought away.
Who do I think I am? Just a dumb Black kid from the poor side of Detroit who has no business trying to make it through Yale with all these intelligent, affluent students
. I kicked a stone and sent it flying into the brown grass.
Stop it
, I told myself.
You'll only make it worse
. I turned my memories back to those teachers who told me, “Benjamin, you're bright. You can go places.”

There, walking alone in the darkness of my thoughts, I could hear Mother insist, “Bennie, you can do it! Why, son, you can do anything you want, and you can do it better than anybody else. I believe in you.”

I turned and began walking between the tall, classic buildings back to the dorm. I had to study.
Stop thinking about failing
, I told myself.
You can still pull this off. Maybe
. I looked up through a scatter of fluttering leaves silhouetted against the rosy autumn sunset. Doubts niggled at the back of my mind.

Finally I turned to God. “I need help,” I prayed. “Being a doctor is all I've ever wanted to do, and now it looks like I can't. And, Lord, I've always had the impression You wanted me to be a doctor. I've worked hard and focused my life that way, assuming that's what I was going to do. But if I fail chemistry I'm going to have to find something else to do. Please help me know what else I should do.”

Back in my room, I sank down on my bed. Dusk came early, and the room was dark. The evening sounds of campus filled the quiet room—cars passing, students' voices in the park below my window, gusts of wind rustling through the trees. Quiet sounds. I sat there, a tall, skinny kid, head in my hands. I had failed. I had finally faced a challenge I couldn't overcome; I was just too late.

Standing up, I flipped on the desk lamp. “OK,” I said to myself as I paced my room, “I'm going to fail chemistry. So I'm not going to be a doctor. Then what is there for me?”

No matter how many other career choices I considered, I couldn't think of anything else in the whole world I wanted more than being a doctor. I remembered the scholarship offer from West Point. A teaching career? Business? None of these areas held any real interest.

My mind reached toward God—a desperate yearning, begging, clinging to Him. “Either help me understand what kind of work I ought to do, or else perform some kind of miracle and help me to pass this exam.”

From that moment on, I felt at peace. I had no answer. God didn't break through my haze of depression and flash a picture in front of me. Yet I knew that whatever happened, everything was going to be all right.

One glimmer of hope—a tiny one at that—shone through my seemingly impossible situation. Although I had been holding on to the bottom rung of the class from the first week at Yale, the professor had a rule that might save me. If failing students did well on the final exam, the teacher would throw out most of the semester's work and let the good final-test score count heavily toward the final grade. That presented the only possibility for me to pass chemistry.

It was nearly 10:00 p.m., and I was tired. I shook my head, knowing that between now and tomorrow morning I couldn't pull off that kind of miracle.

“Ben, you have to try,” I said aloud. “You have to do everything you can.”

I sat down for the next two hours and pored through my thick chemistry textbook, memorizing formulas and equations that I thought might help. No matter what happened during the exam, I would go into it determined to do the best I could. I'd fail but, I consoled myself, at least I'd have a high fail.

As I scribbled formulas on paper, forcing myself to memorize what had no meaning to me, I knew deep inside why I was failing. The course wasn't that tough. The truth lay in something much more basic. Despite my impressive academic record in high school, I really hadn't learned anything about studying. All the way through high school I'd relied on the same old methods—wasting my time during the semester, and then cramming for final exams.

Midnight. The words on the pages blurred, and my mind refused to take in any more information. I flopped into my bed and whispered in the darkness, “God, I'm sorry. Please forgive me for failing You and for failing myself.” Then I slept.

While I slept I had a strange dream, and, when I awakened in the morning, it remained as vivid as if it had actually happened. In the dream I was sitting in the chemistry lecture hall, the only person there. The door opened, and a nebulous figure walked into the room, stopped at the board, and started working out chemistry problems. I took notes of everything he wrote.

When I awakened, I recalled most of the problems, and I hurriedly wrote them down before they faded from memory. A few of the answers actually did fade but, still remembering the problems, I looked them up in my textbook. I knew quite a bit about psychology so assumed I was still trying to work out unresolved problems during my sleep.

I dressed, ate breakfast, and went to the chemistry lecture room with a feeling of resignation. I wasn't sure if I knew enough to pass, but I was numb from intensive cramming and despair. The lecture hall was huge, filled with individual fold-down wooden seats. It would seat about 1,000 students. In the front of the room chalkboards faced us from a large stage. Also on the stage was a big desk with a countertop and sink for chemistry demonstrations. My steps sounded hollow on the wooden floor.

The professor came in and, without saying much, began to hand out the booklets of examination questions. My eyes followed him around the room. It took him a while to pass out the booklets to 600 students. While I waited, I noticed the way the sun shone through the small panes of the arched windows along one wall. It was a beautiful morning to fail a test.